Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Deepak Chopra on Terrorism: Oh, So Wise

Sorry, it's the end of the summer and I don't have the time to write out a whole blog entry on terrorism so I'll let Deepak do the talking for me. This is from October 30th, 2005 right after the terrorist bombings in India. Great post @ IntentBlog:

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The latest bombing attack in India reminds us that terrorism is going to keep on striking regularly and at random.

This is the same realization that Britain came to during the long period of IRA bombings in Northern Ireland and at home in London. The British didn't panic about national security; they didn't start a global war. Instead, they settled in and basically accepted a nasty fact of life, as we in the U.S. long ago settled in and accepted our outlandish rates of murder, drug trafficking, and street crime.

The secret to terrorism lies in the reaction of the victim. In and of itself, terrorism cannot succeed by mass destruction the way war can. Large modern societies aren't crippled by random attacks--except psychologically. In India everyone fears that the bombers will be Muslims and, if early signs are correct, Kashmiri insurgents. That knowledge alone can set off a chain reaction of violence between fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims. The more violent the reaction, the more successful the terrorist act. The previous Indian government encouraged this violent reaction through religious intolerance. Condemnation of violence is hypocrisy whenever politicians can't get elected unless they set Hindu against Muslim.

But there are more secrets about terrorism. I use that word because as governments manipulate public reaction, they also keep other alternatives well hidden. To someone in the general public who has been conditioned to consider all terrorist madmen, it's a secret that terrorism is a planned political tactic, as airplane hijacking was when it first began thirty years ago. Terrorists have legitimate political grievances that they try to solve through totally unacceptable means. In this case, Pakistan and India could have solved the Kashmir crisis decades ago through negotiation. There was no will to do so because both governments make political capital out of keeping the issue inflamed. They are being inhumane and cruel to the people of Kashmir as surely as terrorists are.

The same holds true in the Middle East. The oil-producing Arab states are unspeakably wealthy and could have solved the economic disaster of the Palestinian refugees any time they wanted to. Instead, they have constantly inflamed Palestinian hatred for their own ends. This again is just as cruel and unjust as the terrorism it spawns.The saddest secret about terrorism is that it can be solved politically. There is no reason why the dispute over Jerusalem can't be resolved except that clerics and governments don't want to budge from their irrational absolutism. Resolution only requires sensible compromise. As for the endemic hatred of Israel that underlies so much Muslim terrorism, it's carefully nurtured. If Arab governments took care of their poor, if they stopped fueling hatred with constant propaganda, if they reined in extreme clerics, and above all if they paid for secular education--all of which they could start doing tomorrow--their populace would not be acting like a desperately ignorant mob of the dispossessed with no economic future or political significance.

Finally, the secret of terrorism for the U.S. is that we aren't purely victims. We have been deeply implicated in arms trade, fomenting violence, financing foreign civil wars, and keeping oppressive dictatorships in power. These habits began in the Cold War, and they continue today. Critics of American militarism have had five decades to point out how ruinous it is for a democracy that values peace to devote so much of its wealth and power to war-making. Those critics were largely ignored. If the Soviet Union hadn't imploded on itself, we would still be fueling covert and declared military action in country after country. Now the job of the critics has passed on to the terrorists, for however criminal and horrifying their actions, they aren't insane. They know who they hate, and if we stop being in denial, we'll know the reason why.

Faux News Blues


Clever rhyme huh? Thought it up all by myself...

Great news! As TVNewser reports, Fox News ratings are down BIG TIME. They're down 7% during the day, and a whopping 28% in primetime where it counts. Looks like people are finally starting to see through their bullsh*t, lapdog-to-the-administration style "reporting" of the news. You may think this is indicative of news networks in general but here is the official data: CNN is up 46 percent during the day, 21 percent in primetime. MSNBC is up 26 percent during the day and (unfortunately) only 6 percent in primetime. Sorry Keith, but it's a step in the right direction. Sweet Jesus, I hate Bill O'Reilly.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Keep Votin' Republican Baby

The Seattle Times Reports today:

Experts warn U.S. is coming apart at the seams
By Chuck McCutcheon
Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON — A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.

"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.

"I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.

British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.

Then an instrument landing system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed for the second time in a week, delaying flights.

Those incidents followed reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence world's electronic eavesdropping arm, is consuming so much electricity at its headquarters outside Washington that it is in danger of exceeding its power supply.

"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."

The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate."

It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.
President Bush, asked about the problem during a public question-and-answer session in an April visit to Irvine, Calif., cited last year's enactment of a comprehensive law reauthorizing highway, transit and road-safety programs.

"Infrastructure is always a difficult issue," Bush acknowledged. "It's a federal responsibility and a state and local responsibility. And I, frankly, feel like we've upheld our responsibility at the federal level with the highway bill."

But experts say the law is riddled with some 5,000 "earmarks" for projects sought by members of Congress that do nothing to systematically address the problem.

"There's a growing understanding that these programs are at best inefficient and at worst corrupt," said Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the CSIS public infrastructure commission.
Ehrlich and others cite several reasons for the lack of action:

• The political system is geared to reacting to crises instead of averting them.
• Some politicians don't see infrastructure as a federal responsibility.
• And many problems are out of sight and — for the public — out of mind.

"You see bridges and roads and potholes, but so much else is hidden and taken for granted," said Dinges of the Society of Civil Engineers. "As a result, people just don't get stirred up and alarmed."

But a few politicians are starting to notice. In March, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., joined Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper, D-Del., in sponsoring a bill to set up a national commission to assess infrastructure needs.

That same month, the CSIS infrastructure commission issued a set of principles calling for increased spending, investments in new technologies and partnerships with business. Among those signing the report were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

"Infrastructure deficiencies will further erode our global competitiveness, but with the federal budget so committed to mandatory spending, it's unclear how we are going to deal with this challenge as we fall further and further behind in addressing these problems," Hagel said in a speech last year. "We need to think creatively."


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Keep voting Republican baby... look how great everything is going! So tell me, what platform do Repub' s have going into the midterm elections? What have they done that is so great? Read about the innumerable failures of our president and his congress in my previous posts... I don't need to go into a rant today. It's lunch time.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Bush's Frustration

NY Times yesterday:

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.

Those who attended a Monday lunch at the Pentagon that included the president’s war cabinet and several outside experts said Mr. Bush carefully avoided expressing a clear personal view of the new prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
But in what participants described as a telling line of questioning, Mr. Bush did ask each of the academic experts for their assessment of the prime minister’s effectiveness.
“I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally — that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget,” said one person who attended the meeting. “The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.
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From the Daily Kos:

...reality is coming back to bite BushCo in the butt--all the purple fingers in Iraq can't actually bring about democracy. An election conducted during a foreign occupation and absent any domestic normalization or reconciliation isn't a real election, and the violence just keeps getting worse.

Along with a sharp increase in sectarian attacks, the number of daily strikes against American and Iraqi security forces has doubled since January. The deadliest means of attack, roadside bombs, made up much of that increase. In July, of 2,625 explosive devices, 1,666 exploded and 959 were discovered before they went off. In January, 1,454 bombs exploded or were found....

"The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels," said a senior Defense Department official who agreed to discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. "The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time."

A separate, classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated Aug. 3, details worsening security conditions inside the country and describes how Iraq risks sliding toward civil war, according to several officials who have read the document or who have received a briefing on its contents.

The administration continues to steadfastly deny that Iraq is sliding toward civil war, much less in the throes of one right now. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they insist that everything is going according to plan. Meanwhile, commanders on the ground have to try to marshall limited resources to respond to increasing violence around the country, like some kind of gruesome game of whack-a-mole, deploying troops first here and then there, with casualty counts continuing apace and serious injuries increasing.

Some see movement in the administration on Iraq, an indication that perhaps what can only be called the real reality is sinking in.
"Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy," said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

"Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect," the expert said, "but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy."

But I don't buy it. Here's Bush today:
President Bush said critics of his Iraq policies are advocating a "cut and run" strategy that would draw terrorists to American soil.
"Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom," Bush said Wednesday.
"If we leave before the mission is complete, if we withdraw, the enemy will follow us home," he said.

Is Bush an idiot? I'll leave the final word to Wolcott:

Is water wet?
Is Colin Farrell stubbly? . . .

Unlike other two-term presidents, Bush hasn't grown in office, become an old familiar whose irritating traits and lapses could be accepted almost affectionately, like Reagan's dottiness. He's demonstrably diminished, dwarfed by the reality that he continues to deny and repeating himself in press conferences like a robot whose wiring is on the fritz, for whom words and phrases are nothing more than pre-programmed units of sound. He's more irritating and dangerous than ever before, because he doesn't know anything, doesn't know or care that he doesn't know anything, and yet persists in a path of destruction as if it were the road to salvation. It's finally dawned on responsible minds that Bush could take all of us down with him before he and the neocons are through.
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I'm sure that nobody could have anticipated the fact that Iraqi's wouldn't respond well to a pre-emptive invasion and occupation.... experimenting with unfamiliar forms of government, a death toll well above 50,000 people and so on. That's a sweet deal! I'm sure American's would respond passively if we were invaded by France tommorow. Nobody could have anticipated....

Constitution: Still Relevant

Score one for the Constitution. AOL News Reports:
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A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves secretly taping conversations between people in the U.S. and people in other countries. The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.

The ACLU said the state-secrets argument was irrelevant because the Bush administration already had publicly revealed enough information about the program for Taylor to rule.
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Friday, August 11, 2006


Forgot to post some pics from my cabin trip last weekend. I didn't want to post another rant today because I didn't want anyone who visits my blog to miss the CwG post from yesterday. The message in it is too important and too meaningful to me to just continue posting and have it fade into obscurity with all my other old posts that nobody reads. I know what I'll be blogging about tomorrow, which is politicizing american security. Gotta run; Wu Tang and I Self Divine are at First Ave. tonight and I'm having a close encounter with Method Man, Gza, Rza, Ghostface Killa, and the rest of the shaolin. Wow, am I going to feel out of place... should be fun. I'll probably be the only one there who owns less than 6 wu tang clan cds. (yes i listen to the wu, you'd be surprised how diverse my music listening habits are) Have a fun weekend everyone, I know I will.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

CwG: An Uncommon Dialogue

Since this website is technically called “spirituality demonstrated”, once again I feel obliged to share a passage from the source of some of my wisdom/spirituality/whatever cheesy word you wanna call it. I’ve posted passages from these books before, and I’ll continue doing it. I just wanted to reiterate that you should not be thrown off by the title, because the level of wisdom and common sense present in these books will blow you away if you give them a chance. It’s a continued conversation with what Neale Donald Walsch calls “god”. I won’t get into whether or not it’s actually God that he’s talking to, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s an assumption that if you were to talk to something that represented a perspective that contained infinite understanding and wisdom, what would you ask it? What might He/She/It say? This particular passage comes from his second Conversations with God book, which focuses on geo-politics and the state of the world in general. (Q&A Format, Neale italicized, "god" not)

Specifically talking about the relationship of war, the economy and humanitarian causes.
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If you could add billions of dollars a year to your nation’s economy – dollars which could be spent to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, house the poor, bring security to the elderly, provide better health, and produce a dignified standard of living for all – wouldn’t that be in your nation’s best interest?

Well, in America there are those who would argue that it would help the poor at the expense of the rich and of the middle-income taxpayer. Meanwhile, the country continues to go to hell, crime ravages the nation, inflation robs the people of their life savings, unemployment skyrockets, the government grows bigger and fatter, and in school they’re handing out condoms.

You sound like a radio talk show.

Well, these are the concerns of many Americans.


Then they are short-sighted. Do you not see that if billions of dollars a year-that’s millions a month, hundreds and hundreds of thousands a week, unheard of amounts each day – could be sunk back into your system… that if you could use these monies to feed your hungry, clothe your needy, house your poor, bring security to your elderly, and provide health care and dignity to all… the causes of crime would be lost forever? Do you not see that new jobs would mushroom as dollars were pumped back into your economy? That your own government could even be reduced because it would have less to do?

I suppose some of that could happen – I can’t imagine government ever getting smaller! – but just where are these millions and billions going to come from? Taxes imposed by Your new world government? More taking from those who’ve “worked to get it” to give to those who won’t “stand upon their own two feet” and go after it?

Is that how you frame it?

No, but it is how a great many people see it, and I wanted to fairly state their view.

Well, I’d like to talk about that later. Right now I don’t want to get off track – but I want to come back to that later.

Great.

But you’ve asked where these new dollars would come from. Well, they would not have to come from any new taxes imposed by the new world community (although members of the community – individual citizens – would want, under an enlightened governance, to send 10 percent of their income to provide for society’s needs as a whole). Nor would they come from new taxes imposed by any local government. In fact, some local governments would surely be able to reduce taxes.

All of this – all of these benefits – would result from the simple restructuring of your world view, the simpler reordering of your world political configuration.

How?

The money you save from building defense systems and attack weapons.

Oh, I get it! You want us to close down the military!

Not just you. Everybody in the world.
But not close down your military, simply reduce it – drastically. Internal order would be your only need. You could strengthen local police – something you say you want to do, but cry each year at budget time that you cannot do – at the same time dramatically reducing your spending on weapons of war and preparations for war; that is, offensive and defensive weapons of mass destruction.

First, I think your figures exaggerate how much could be saved by doing that. Second, I don’t think You’ll ever convince people they should give up their ability to defend themselves.

Let’s look at the numbers. Presently (it is March 25, 1994, as we write this) the world’s governments spend about one trillion dollars a year for military purposes. That’s a million dollars a minute worldwide. (that's $1,000,000,000,000)

The nations that are spending the most could redirect the most to other priorities mentioned. So larger, richer nations would see it in their best interests to do so – if they thought it was possible. But larger, richer nations cannot imagine going defenseless, for they fear aggression and attack from the nations which envy them and want what they have.

There are two ways to eliminate this threat.
1. Share enough of the world’s total wealth and resources with all of the world’s people so that no one will want and need what someone else has, and everyone may live in dignity and remove themselves from fear.
2. Create a system for the resolution of differences that eliminates the need for war – and even the possibility of it.

The people of the world would probably never do this.

They already have.

They have?

Yes. There is a great experiment now going on in your world in just this sort of political order. That experiment is called the United States of America.

Which You said was failing miserably.

It is. It has very far to go before it could be called a success. (As I promised earlier, I’ll talk about this – and the attitudes which are now preventing it – later.) Still, it is the best experiment going.

It is as Winston Churchill said. “Democracy is the worst system,” he announced, “except all others.”

Your nation was the first to take a loose confederation of individual states and successfully unite them into a cohesive group, each submitting to one central authority.
At the time, none of the states wanted to do this, and each resisted mightily, fearing the loss of its individual greatness and claiming that such a union would not serve its best interests.
…..

In short, your original states, though joined together under the Articles of Confederation, were acting exactly as independent nations do today.
Although they could see that the agreements of their Confederation (such as the granting to Congress the sole authority to coin money) were not working, they staunchly resisted creating and submitting to a central authority that could enforce these agreements and put some teeth into them.

Yet, in time, a few progressive leaders began to prevail. They convinced the rank and file that there was more to be gained by creating such a new Federation than they would ever lose.
Merchants would save money and increase profits because individual states could no longer tax each other’s goods.

Governments would save money and have more to put into programs and services that truly helped people because resources would not have to be used to protect individual states from each other.

The people would have greater security and safety, and greater prosperity, too, by cooperating with, rather than fighting with, each other.

Far from losing their greatness, each state could become greater still.

And that, of course is exactly what has happened.
The same could be made to happen with the 160 nation states in the world today if they were to join together in a United Federation.

It could mean an end to war.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Dem Haters!

Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democratic Primary last night. It just so happens that Joe Lieberman is JEWISH. Did you know that? Amazing isn't it? So this must obviously be evidence of anti-semitism in the Democratic Party right? According to the insightful Rush Limbaugh that is most certainly the case.

Here is the transcript from a segment of his show today: (listen to the audio clip @Media Matters)


LIMBAUGH: Can we go back? I'm gonna need Chris Matthews again. Grab number 10. Audio sound bite number 10. This from Chris Matthews last night on his -- well, it wasn't Hardball. It was his election coverage on PMSNBC [sic].

MATTHEWS [audio clip]: The body language of the two is so different. You have this very WASP-y fellow, [businessman Ned] Lamont. Very calm, very casual, very St. Paul's, almost, in the prep-school sense. [...] Lieberman, of course, is the schmaltzy, ethnic guy, the Uncle Tonoose, you know. The guy that's very kind of lachrymose in his, almost, postnasal-drip voice of his. [...] But he doesn't look happy.

LIMBAUGH: All right. Now, let's -- "schmaltzy, ethnic guy, the Uncle Tonoose." And as I said in the last hour, Uncle Tonoose was a character on the old Danny Thomas Show, and I think I'm pretty safe in saying that Uncle Tonoose was played by Hans Conried. Huge hook nose and so forth. Here's Matthews describing -- let's be honest about this, folks. Let's just put it out there. When you say somebody is a schmaltzy, ethnic guy, you're not talking about an Arab. You are talking about a Jew. You describe somebody as a schmaltzy, ethnic guy who has postnasal drip with his voice, lachrymose and so forth. Uncle Tonoose, in character, was a Lebanese Arab. Danny Thomas was a Christian Lebanese, and Uncle Tonoose therefore -- but isn't it interesting that you have Chris Matthews describing an Arab as a Jew. On the basis of appearance. Schmaltzy, ethnic guy, which -- you know, there are some people saying this, but they're dancing around it. But one of the little -- not-often-discussed aspects of the kook fringe base of the Democratic Party, and I'm just gonna put it out there, is its anti-Semitism. There is so much anti-Semitism today in the Democratic Party. It is -- I don't think it's an accident that [Rev. Al] Sharpton and the Rev. [Jesse] Jackson are up there standing behind Lamont [during his victory speech on August 8]. (this is apparently rush's evidence of democratic anti-semitism)
[...]

CALLER: Their party has been taken over by people that are anti-Israel, as in Cindy Sheehan and Soros, who happens to be a self-hating Jew.

LIMBAUGH: Right.

CALLER: They hate Israel, they hate Jews, they're terrorism deniers. And I just hope it's a wake-up call to the Jewish people that are out there. Is that still the best party for them?

LIMBAUGH: Yeah. Doubt that that's going to happen. It's going to take a little bit more than this. The seat of this anti-Semitism right now is focused in kooks like Sheehan and the blogs and the MoveOn.org people and Soros.


AAAAHHHHHH! (that's me screaming from my overwhelming frustration) This is absolutely ridiculous. I was debating some cons on captainsquartersblog.com today again and got into it with this guy jerry who was totally, completely convinced that Dems were Jew haters. I've already typed a good argument/rant on this today on that blog so I'll just copy and paste parts of it. He called me a couple names, like a nazi, deaf and dumb so if I sound mean it was because he was meaner first! Haha I really need to grow up.
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For those few genuine leftists who are tempted to buy into anti-semitic arguments based on Israel's policies, the Bush administration's blanket support of same, or the embrace of Israel by American fundamentalists, please learn to draw the distinction between Israel's government and all Jews.

Please learn to draw the distinction between Israel's government and all Jews. Make sense? Or are you blinder, deafer and dumber than you would say I am?

Actually, I don't think you're listening to Bill O'Reilly or Hannity.... or that druggie limp-baugh. You're one of those Michael Savage-ites aren't ya??? The ones who would call Jewish people like Wolf Blitzer anti-semitic. Hell, anybody can be anti-semitic... it all depends on how twisted and perverted you interpret the statements of the people around you. If you're always looking for anti-semitism, you'll find it. Just like if you're always on the look for racism, you'll obviously find it.

Don't call me a Nazi with absolutely no evidence to back it up. I disagree with Joe over the war... that's all I said. If I was to attack him about anything concerning him personally, it would be that when he talks he's even duller than Al Gore! That's about all the beef I have with the guy. Now I'm a Nazi. Ok, whatever you say ; )
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I'm sick of these cons painting the democratic party and telling us WHO WE ARE. We aren't anti-semitic and we aren't naziis. If you're going to make statements like that, back it up with some reliable evidence! Chris Matthews, (who is definetly not a Democrat) saying something that vaguely hints at him actually being Jewish, that may or may not have been anti-semitic, is nowhere near proof of the party I support being "Jew-haters".

I hate you Rush. I don't usually hate people... but I hate you. You preach about how drug users are losers and horrible people (or used to) and you're addicted to oxycontin, one of the most potent opiate drugs you can get legally under a prescription (and you got illegally). It's heroine in a pill Rush... you can't get any lower than that. Then you get caught with Viagra that isn't prescribed to you after coming back from a trip with ALL GUYS to the Dominican Republican which just happens to be one of the most notorious nations for allowing sex tourism in their country with underage girls. I'm just saying... he COULD be a pedophile. Just like Chris Matthews COULD be an anti-semite. You're a hypocrit and people who actually listen to you are blind followers without any sense of critical thinking.

-- I said I wouldn't edit this, but I will add to it. I wrote a comment in the thread that needs repeating:

I know I shouldn't stoop to the man's level but sometimes I feel justified. Tonight, I felt justified because of the ridiculous accusations being made by every conservative pundit in america. The blowhorn is sounding. Elections are coming and these people are resuming their baseless, immoral attacks once again.

Is it any coincidence that on any given day, Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Savage, Coulter, the list goes on and on... are ALL SAYING THE EXACT SAME THINGS?

This is calculated. This is genius.

I'm merely making the observation that Rush went to the dominican republic (famous for sex tourism) with a bottle of viagra that wasn't prescribed to him. Using his own reasoning, I made the same assumption that he would have, had this happened to a liberal talk show radio host.

I'm not proud of what I said, but I won't apologize. This man deserves all the ridicule in the world, simply for the fact that he dishes it out everyday on his radio show against people he simply doesn't agree with. He misleads his listeners and constantly distorts the facts. He's a scumbag. If I have to be a scumbag to provide some kind of justice on the part of the people he has ridiculed, than so be it.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Pat Robertson: It's Hot Outside!

Pat Robertson, the man who I have ruthlessly attacked several times on this blog for being an old, prejudice, homophobic, bigot has admitted that he is now a convert to the environmentalist stance on global warming.
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According to Yahoo! News:

"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," Robertson said on his "700 Club" broadcast. "It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was "the most convincing evidence I've seen on global warming in a long time."

Last year, Robertson said natural disasters affecting the globe, including hurricanes Katrina and Rita that wrecked the U.S. Gulf Coast, might be signs that the biblical apocalypse was nearing.

The issue has divided conservative Christians.

In October, Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate, said the National Association of Evangelicals was teaming up with "far left environmentalists" for saying global warming was caused by humans and needed to be mitigated.
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Pat decided to flip-flop on his position because.... man, it's hot out! Not because of the overwhelming scientific concensus on the subject, or the fact that out of 928 peer-reviewed studies on global warming, not one denied the fact that human-activities have had a substantial effect on the heating of the planet. Let's not forget that this is the same guy who blames all of the world's problems on the homosexuals. I'm not proud to have him on my side, but he does have significant influence in the evangelical community. Welcome to the light Pat. Start praying... we need all the help we can get.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

To All the Non-Believers


I found this great editorial on the seattle post website:

-Johann Hari-

Rev up your SUV. Jump in a plane to New York for a morning meeting about how global warming is a "scam" and head back in the afternoon. When you return to your empty, centrally heated house, turn on that gas fire -- and toss a copy of the Kyoto treaty on the flames. This is the message from David Bellamy, still routinely dubbed one of Britain's "leading environmentalists." Global warming? Chill, baby, chill.
For more than a decade now, the climate change deniers have been in retreat, humbled by the thumping weight of scientific evidence. More than 10,000 reputable, peer-reviewed climate scientists believe the evidence that shows rapid shifts in global temperature are caused by human activity. Seven -- that's seven -- doubt it. But Bellamy's increasingly erratic outbursts over the past year have given the beleaguered band of anti-environmentalists a fresh gallon of petrol to fuel their flailing pro-carbon crusade.


"My belief is that global warming is a largely natural phenomenon and the world is in danger of wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can't be fixed and doesn't need to be anyway," Bellamy said, producing ecstasy in the offices of dozens of J.R. Ewings.
Whenever a journalist writes about man-made climate change, a cascade of e-mails from across the Atlantic floods in. The Arctic ice-sheet has lost half its thickness in the past 30 years? The 1990s were the hottest decade of the entire millennium? The level of carbon in the atmosphere has been consistently rising over this period? "Coincidence!" they cry.

They claim that anthropogenic climate change is "unproven." They send "briefing papers" from corporate-funded think tanks, designed to give the impression that this is "a controversial debate with two sides" and the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change -- consisting of the world's 2,500 best climatologists -- was "fixed." They claim that they are "debunking myths" but when you look at the evidence, it becomes clear that they entertain more myths than the ancient Greeks.

Their first claim is intuitively appealing. It goes like this: Climate changes naturally in slow, inexorable cycles over millennia. It is simply egotism on the part of human beings to assume that our puny emissions have any effect at all.

At first, this sounds persuasive. Aren't we tiny? Isn't the world huge?
I put this to Geoff Jenkins, Britain's leading climatologist. He replied: "Of course it is true that many factors affect the climate, from changes in the sun to volcanoes. But levels of carbon are a key factor as well."

Everyone agrees there is a natural greenhouse effect, he explains. It's simple: Carbon and water vapor in the atmosphere trap heat and they keep us warmer. This is basic science. All climatologists are saying is that if you increase one of those properties -- carbon -- then more heat will be trapped and the temperature will rise further. "Nobody denies the natural greenhouse effect and nobody denies that humans have massively increased carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution," says Jenkins, "so why does anybody dispute this unnatural greenhouse effect, especially with all the evidence of its effects?"

Jenkins invited Professor Bellamy to explain to him that levels of carbon in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for the past 420,000 years -- with an obvious impact on the greenhouse effect. "He doesn't seem to have grasped basic scientific evidence," says Jenkins, a mild-tempered man, about the meeting. "When you understand how the atmosphere works in even a rudimentary fashion, his argument doesn't hold water."

Because the deniers are so out of tune with this overwhelming scientific consensus, they have been forced to turn on climatology itself. They say that -- out of hunger for research grants -- climatologists have all begun to skew their evidence. The more disastrous their predictions, the more money they are given by government agencies, so you can't trust what they say.

This is the opposite of the truth. The U.S. government has funded swaths of the most reputable climate change research. Who can seriously claim the White House of George W. Bush is eager for proof of climate change?

In fact, there is political pressure -- but it is for scientists to play down the evidence of climate change. For any scientist prepared to defy the evidence and deny anthropogenic climate change, there are huge "grants" and "consultancies" waiting for you from gas and oil companies.

The deniers then take a different tack: In the 1970s, they say, climatologists were warning about the dangers of a "new Ice Age." Now they say we'll boil. Isn't the truth that they don't know?

This is largely a myth. A handful of scientists in the '70s believed they were witnessing a process of "global cooling" that -- if extrapolated for a very long period -- would lead to an Ice Age. They said this was simply a possibility worth exploring, and they admitted the evidence was woefully insufficient. A few populist magazines ran with the idea but the scientists always expressed extreme uncertainty.

Today, by contrast, there is a near-complete scientific consensus that man-made global warming is happening and could be disastrous. The evidence is not patchy and partial, as the "global cooling" scientists always admitted theirs was; it is massive and overwhelming.

There are countless myths, but these arguments are distracting dances on the precipice of a volcano. The IPCC says we are now poised on the brink of a temperature rise in the next century that is bigger than the difference between the present day and the end of the last Ice Age. This will, they explain, "translate into climate-related impacts that are much larger and faster than any that have occurred during the 10,000-year history of civilization." Nobody knows where this will lead.

The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers. Indeed, given that 25,000 people died in Europe in the 2003 heat wave caused by anthropogenic climate change, given that the genocide unfolding in Darfur has been exacerbated by the stresses of climate change, given that Bangladesh may disappear beneath the rising seas in the next century, they are nudging close to having the moral credibility of Holocaust deniers.

They are denying the reality of a force that -- unless we change the way we live pretty fast -- will kill millions.